Norse Mythology Sleep Facts

Sleep comes easily when gods behave badly and fate is a tangled mess. Tonight, Norse mythology drones on about Odin’s questionable parenting, Thor’s hammer issues, and Loki being Loki. Drift off to tales older than your insomnia.

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is about Norse Mythology.

Norse,

Nordic,

Or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the Norse Germanic peoples,

Stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period.

The northernmost extension of Germanic mythology and stemming from Proto-Germanic folklore,

Norse mythology consists of tales of various deities,

Beings,

And heroes derived from numerous sources from both before and after the pagan period,

Including medieval manuscripts,

Archaeological representations,

And folk tradition.

The source texts mention numerous gods,

Such as the thunder god Thor,

The raven-flanked god Odin,

The goddess Freyja,

And numerous other deities.

Most of the surviving mythology centers on the plights of the gods and their interaction with several other beings,

Such as humanity and the jötnar,

Beings who may be friends,

Lovers,

Foes,

Or family members of the gods.

The cosmos in Norse mythology consists of nine worlds that flank a central sacred tree,

Yggdrasil.

Units of time and elements of the cosmology are personified as deities or beings.

Various forms of a creation myth are recounted,

Where the world is created from the flesh of primordial being Ymir,

And the first two humans are Ask and Embla.

These worlds are foretold to be reborn after the events of the Ragnarok,

When an immense battle occurs between the gods and their enemies,

And the world is enveloped in flames,

Only to be reborn anew.

There the surviving gods will meet,

And the land will be fertile and green,

And two humans will repopulate the world.

Norse mythology has been the subject of scholarly discourse since the 17th century,

When key texts attracted the attention of the intellectual circles of Europe.

By way of comparative mythology and historical linguistics,

Scholars have identified elements of Germanic mythology reaching as far back as Proto-Indo-European mythology.

During the modern period,

The Romanticist-Viking revival reawoke an interest in the subject matter,

And references to Norse mythology may now be found throughout the world.

The myths have further been revived in a religious context among adherents of Germanic neo-paganism.

The historical religion of the Norse people is commonly referred to as Norse mythology.

Other terms are Scandinavian mythology,

North Germanic mythology,

Or Nordic mythology.

Norse mythology is primarily attested in dialects of Old Norse,

A North Germanic language spoken by the Scandinavian people during the European Middle Ages,

And the ancestor of modern Scandinavian languages.

The majority of these Old Norse texts were created in Iceland,

Where the oral tradition stemming from the pre-Christian inhabitants of the island was collected and recorded in manuscripts.

This occurred primarily in the 13th century.

These texts include the Prose Edda,

Composed in the 13th century by the Icelandic scholar,

Law speaker,

And historian Snorri Sturluson,

And the Poetic Edda,

A collection of poems from earlier traditional material anonymously compiled in the 13th century.

The Prose Edda was composed as a prose manual for producing skaldic poetry,

Traditional Old Norse poetry composed by skalds.

Originally composed and transmitted orally,

Skaldic poetry utilizes alliterative verse,

Kennings,

And several metrical forms.

The Prose Edda presents numerous examples of works by various skalds from before and after the Christianization process,

And also frequently refers back to the poems found in the Poetic Edda.

The Poetic Edda consists almost entirely of poems,

With some prose narrative added,

And this poetry,

Eddaic poetry,

Utilizes fewer kennings.

In comparison to skaldic poetry,

Eddaic poetry is relatively unadorned.

The Prose Edda features layers of euhemerization,

A process in which deities and supernatural beings are presented as having been either actual,

Magic-wielding human beings,

Who have been deified in time,

Or beings demonized by way of Christian mythology.

Texts,

Such as Heimskringla,

Composed in the 13th century by Snorri and Gesta de Norum,

Composed in Latin by Saxo Grammaticus in Denmark in the 12th century,

Are the results of heavy amounts of euhemerization.

Numerous additional texts,

Such as the Sagas,

Provide further information.

The Saga Corpus consists of thousands of tales recorded in Old Norse,

Ranging from Icelandic family histories,

Sagas of Icelanders,

To migration period tales mentioning historic figures,

Such as Attila the Hun,

Legendary sagas.

Objects and monuments,

Such as the Rook Runestone and the Kvinneby Amulet,

Feature runic inscriptions,

Texts written in the runic alphabet,

The indigenous alphabet of the Germanic peoples,

That mention figures and events from Norse mythology.

Objects from the archaeological record may also be interpreted as depictions of subjects from Norse mythology,

Such as amulets of the god Thor's hammer,

Mjolnir,

Found among pagan burials,

And small silver female figures interpreted as Valkyries or Dísir,

Beings associated with war,

Fate,

Or ancestor cults.

By way of historical linguistics and comparative mythology,

Comparisons to other attested branches of Germanic mythology,

Such as the Old High German Merseburg incantations,

May also lend insight.

Wider comparisons to the mythology of other Indo-European peoples by scholars has resulted in the potential reconstruction of far earlier myths.

Only a tiny amount of poems and tales survive of the many mythical tales and poems that are presumed to have existed during the Middle Ages,

Viking Age,

Migration Period,

And before.

Later sources reaching into the modern period,

Such as a medieval charm recorded as used by the Norwegian woman Ragnhild Regagus,

Convicted of witchcraft in Norway in the 14th century,

And spells found in the 17th century Icelandic Aldebrok Grimoire,

Also sometimes make references to Norse mythology.

Other traces,

Such as place names bearing the names of gods,

May provide further information about deities,

Such as a potential association between deities based on the placement of locations bearing their names,

Their local popularity,

And associations with geological features.

Central to accounts of Norse mythology are the plights of the gods and their interaction with other beings,

Such as with the Jotnar,

Who may be friends,

Lovers,

Foes,

Or family members of the gods.

Numerous gods are mentioned in the source texts,

As evidenced by records of personal names and place names.

The most popular god among the Scandinavians during the Viking Age was Thor the Thunder God,

Who is portrayed as unrelentingly pursuing his foes,

His mountain-crushing thunderous hammer Mjolnir in hand.

In the mythology,

Thor lays waste to numerous Jotnar,

Who are foes to the gods or humanity,

And is wed to the beautiful golden-haired goddess Sif.

The god Odin is also frequently mentioned in surviving texts.

One-eyed,

Wolf,

And raven-flanked,

With a spear in hand,

Odin pursues knowledge throughout the nine realms.

In an act of self-sacrifice,

Odin is described as having hung himself upside down for nine days and on the cosmological tree Yggdrasil to gain knowledge of the runic alphabet,

Which he passed on to humanity.

He is also associated closely with death,

Wisdom,

And poetry.

Odin is portrayed as the ruler of Asgard and leader of the Aesir.

Odin's wife is the powerful goddess Frigg,

Who can see the future but tells no one,

And together they have a beloved son Baldr.

After a series of dreams had by Baldr of his impending death,

His death is engineered by Loki,

And Baldr thereafter resides in Hel,

A realm ruled over by an entity of the same name.

Odin must share half of his share of the dead with the powerful goddess Freyja.

She is beautiful,

Sensual,

Wears a feathered cloak,

And practices Sather.

She rides to battle to choose among the slain,

And brings her chosen to her afterlife field of folk-fonger.

Freyja weeps for her missing husband Oðr and seeks after him in faraway lands.

Freyja's brother the god Freyr is also frequently mentioned in surviving texts.

Deeply lovesick after catching sight of the beautiful Jötunn Gerðr,

Freyr seeks and wins her love,

Yet at the price of his future doom.

Their father is the powerful god Njörðr.

Njörðr is strongly associated with ships and seafaring,

And so also wealth and prosperity.

Freyja and Freyr's mother is Njörðr's unnamed sister.

Her name is unprovided in the source material.

However,

There is more information about his pairing with the skiing and hunting goddess Skadi.

Their relationship is ill-fated,

As Skadi cannot stand to be away from her beloved mountains,

Nor Njörðr from the seashore.

Together Freyja,

Freyr,

And Njörðr form a portion of gods known as the Vanir.

While the Aesir and the Vanir retained distinct identification,

They came together as a result of the Aesir-Vanir war.

While they receive less mention,

Numerous other gods and goddesses appear in the source material.

Some of the gods heard less of include the apple-bearing goddess Isun and her husband the Skaldic god Bragi,

The gold-toothed god Heimdallr,

Born of nine mothers,

The ancient god Tyr,

Who lost his right hand while binding the great wolf Fenrir,

And the goddess Gevion,

Who formed modern-day Zealand,

Denmark.

Various beings outside of the gods are mentioned.

Elves and dwarves are commonly mentioned and appear to be connected,

But their attributes are vague,

And the relation between the two is ambiguous.

Elves are described as radiant and beautiful,

Whereas dwarves often act as earthen smiths.

A group of beings variously described as Jötnar,

Thursar,

And Trolls,

In English these are all often glossed as giants,

Frequently appear.

These beings may either aid,

Deter,

Or take their place among the gods.

The Norns,

Aesir,

And aforementioned Valkyries also receive frequent mention.

While their functions and roles may overlap and differ,

All are collective female beings associated with fate.

In Norse cosmology,

All beings live in nine worlds that center around the cosmological tree Yggdrasil.

The gods inhabit the heavenly realm of Asgard,

Whereas humanity inhabits Midgard,

A region in the center of the cosmos.

Outside of the gods,

Humanity,

And the Jötnar,

These nine worlds are inhabited by beings,

Such as elves and dwarves.

Travel between the worlds is frequently recounted in the myths,

Where the gods and other beings may interact directly with humanity.

Numerous creatures live on Yggdrasil,

Such as the insulting messenger squirrel Ratatoskr,

And the perching hawk Vesrfólnir.

The tree itself has three major roots,

And at the base of one of these roots lives the Norns,

Female entities associated with fate.

Elements of the cosmos are personified,

Such as the sun,

Sol,

A goddess,

The moon,

Mani,

A god,

And earth,

Yrth,

A goddess,

As well as units of time,

Such as day,

Dagr,

A god,

And night,

Nátt,

A jötunn.

The afterlife is a complex matter in Norse mythology.

The dead may go to the murky realm of Hel,

A realm ruled over by a female being of the same name,

May be ferried away by Valkyries to Odin's martial hall,

Valhalla,

Or may be chosen by the goddess Freyja to dwell in her field,

Folkvangr.

The goddess Ran may claim those that die at sea,

And the goddess Kevyon is said to be attended by virgins upon their death.

Texts also make reference to reincarnation.

Time itself is presented between cyclic and linear,

And some scholars have argued that cyclic time was the original format for the mythology.

Various forms of a cosmological creation story are provided in Icelandic sources,

And references to a future destruction and rebirth of the world,

Ragnarok,

Are frequently mentioned in some texts.

According to the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda Poem,

Vellupspa,

The first human couple consisted of Ask and Embla,

Driftwood found by a trio of gods and imbued with life in the form of three gifts.

After the cataclysm of Ragnarok,

This process is mirrored in the survival of two humans from a wood,

Leif and Leifthrasir.

From these two humankind is foretold to repopulate the new and green earth.

Old Norse religion,

Also known as Norse paganism,

Is a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period,

When the North Germanic peoples separated into distinct branches.

It was replaced by Christianity and forgotten during the Christianization of Scandinavia.

Scholars reconstruct aspects of Norse Germanic religion by historical linguistics,

Archaeology,

Toponymy,

And records left by Norse Germanic peoples,

Such as runic inscriptions in the Younger Futhark,

A distinctly Norse Germanic extension of the Old Norse.

Numerous Old Norse works dated to the 13th century record Norse mythology,

A component of North Germanic religion.

Old Norse religion was polytheistic,

Entailing a belief in various gods and goddesses.

These deities in Norse mythology were divided into two groups,

The Aesir and the Vanir.

Who in some sources were said to have engaged in war,

Until realizing that they were equally powerful.

Among the most widespread deities were the gods Odin and Thor.

This world was inhabited also by other mythological races,

Including Jotnar,

Dwarfs,

Elves,

And land wights.

Norse cosmology revolved around a world tree known as Yggdrasil,

With various realms called Midgard existing alongside humans.

These involved multiple afterlives,

Several of which were controlled by a particular deity.

Transmitted through oral culture instead of codified texts,

Old Norse religion focused heavily on ritual practice,

With kings and chiefs playing a central role in carrying out public acts of sacrifice.

Various cultic spaces were used,

Initially outdoor spaces such as groves and lakes were chosen,

But after the 3rd century CE cult houses seemed to also have been purposely built for ritual activity.

Although they were never widespread.

Throughout its history,

Varying levels of transcultural diffusion occurred among neighboring peoples,

Such as the Sami and Finns.

By the 12th century,

Old Norse religion had been replaced by Christianity,

With elements continuing in Scandinavian folklore.

A revival of interest in Old Norse religion occurred among the Romanticism of the 19th century,

Which inspired a range of artwork.

Academic research into the subject began in the early 19th century,

Influenced by the pervasive Romanticist sentiment.

The archaeologist Anders Andrén noted that Old Norse religion is the conventional name applied to the pre-Christian religions of Scandinavia.

See for instance,

Other terms used by scholarly sources include pre-Christian Norse religion,

Norse religion,

Norse paganism,

Nordic paganism,

Scandinavian paganism,

Scandinavian heathenism,

Scandinavian religion,

Northern paganism,

Northern heathenism,

North Germanic religion,

Or North Germanic paganism.

This Old Norse religion can be seen as part of a broader Germanic religion found across linguistically Germanic Europe.

Of the different forms of this Germanic religion,

That of the Old Norse is the best documented.

Rooted in the ritual practice and oral tradition,

Old Norse religion was fully integrated with other aspects of Norse life,

Including subsistence,

Warfare,

And social interactions.

Open codifications of Old Norse beliefs were either rare or non-existent.

The practitioners of this belief system themselves had no term meaning religion,

Which was only introduced with Christianity.

Following Christianity's arrival,

Old Norse terms that were used for the pre-Christian systems were fornsith,

Old custom,

Or heathensith,

Heathen custom,

Terms which suggest an emphasis on rituals,

Actions,

And behaviors rather than belief itself.

The earliest known usage of the Old Norse term heathen is in the poem Haukannamal.

Its uses here indicates that the arrival of Christianity has generated consciousness of Old Norse religion as a distinct religion.

Old Norse religion has been classed as an ethnic religion and as a non-doctrinal community religion.

It varied across time,

In different regions and locales,

And according to social differences.

This variation is partly due to its transmission through oral culture rather than codified text.

For this reason,

The archaeologists Andrén,

Kristina Jönbørd,

And Katarina Raudvara stated that pre-Christian Norse religion is not a uniform or stable category.

While the scholar Karen Beck-Pettersen noted that the Old Norse belief system should probably be conceived of in the plural as several systems.

The historian of religion,

Hilde Ellis Davidson,

Stated that it would have ranged from manifestations of complex symbolism to the simple folk beliefs of the less sophisticated.

During the Viking Age,

The Norse likely regarded themselves as a more or less unified entity through their shared Germanic language,

Old Norse.

The scholar of Scandinavian studies,

Thomas A.

De Bois,

Said Old Norse religion and other pre-Christian belief systems in Northern Europe must be viewed as not as isolated,

Mutually exclusive language-bound entities,

But as broad concepts shared across cultural and linguistic lines,

Conditioned by similar ecological factors,

And protracted economically.

During this period,

The Norse interacted closely with other ethno-cultural and linguistic groups,

Such as the Sami,

Balto-Finns,

Anglo-Saxons,

Greenlandic Inuit,

And various speakers of Celtic and Slavic languages.

Economic,

Marital,

And religious exchange occurred between the Norse and many of these other groups.

Enslaved individuals from the British Isles were common throughout the Nordic world during the Viking Age.

Different elements of Old Norse religion had different origins and histories.

Some aspects may derive from deep into prehistory,

Others only emerging following the encounter with Christianity.

In Hilda Ellis Davidson's words,

Present-day knowledge of Old Norse religion contains vast gaps and we must be cautious and avoid basing wild assumptions on isolated details.

A few runic inscriptions with religious content survived from Scandinavia,

Particularly asking Thor to hollow or protect a memorial stone.

Carving his hammer on the stone also served this function.

In contrast to the few runic fragments,

A considerable body of literary and historical sources survive in Old Norse manuscripts,

Using the Latin script,

All of which were created after the Christianization of Scandinavia,

The majority in Iceland.

The first extensive Nordic textual source for the Old Norse religion was the Poetic Edda.

Some of the poetic sources in particular,

The Poetic Edda and Skaldic poetry,

May have been originally composed by heathens.

And Hávamál contains both information and heathen mysticism,

And what Ursula Dranca referred to as a roundup of ritual obligations.

In addition,

There is information about pagan beliefs and practices in the sagas,

Which include both historical sagas,

Such as Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla and the Landnámbabók,

Recounting the settlement and early history of Iceland,

And the so-called sagas of Icelanders concerning Icelandic individuals and groups.

There are also more or less fantastical legendary sagas.

Many Skaldic verses are preserved in sagas.

Of the originally heathen works,

We cannot know what changes took place either during oral transmission or as a result of their being recorded by Christians.

The sagas of Icelanders in particular are now regarded by most scholars as more or less historical fiction,

Rather than as detailed historical records.

A large amount of mythological poetry has undoubtedly been lost.

One important written source is Snorri's Prose Edda,

Which incorporates a manual of Norse mythology for the use of poets in constructing kennings.

It also includes numerous citations,

Some of them the only record of lost poems,

Such as Hjótálfr Hífnir's Haustlung,

Snorri's prologue Eumaeruses,

The Æsir as Trojans,

Deriving Æsir from Asia,

And some scholars have suspected that many of the stories that we only have from him are also derived from Christian medieval culture.

Additional sources remain by non-Scandinavians writing in languages other than Old Norse.

The first non-Scandinavian textual source for the Old Norse religion was Tacitus' book The Germania,

Which dates back to around 100 CE and describes religious practices of several Germanic peoples,

But has little coverage of Scandinavia.

In the Middle Ages,

Several Christian commentators also wrote about Scandinavian paganism,

Mostly from a hostile perspective.

The best known of these are Adam of Bremen's Gesta Homo Borgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum,

History of the Bishops of Hamburg,

Written between 1066 and 1072,

Which includes an account of the temple at Uppsala and Saxo Grammaticus' 12th century Gesta Danorum,

History of the Danes,

Which includes versions of Norse myths and some material on pagan religious practices.

In addition,

Muslim Arabs wrote accounts of Norse people they encountered,

The best known of which is Ibn Fadlan's 10th century Rizala,

An account of Volga Viking traders.

It includes a detailed description of a ship burial.

Reviews

Thank you Ben for another interesting sleep aid topic. Keep up the excellent work

I liked this one Ben! Very interesting and it put me to sleep twice! Once when I first went to bed and then at 2:30am. Double duty! Anyway, thank you!

What can I say that I haven't already said, Benjamin?!